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In July each year the Gold Coast holds one of its biggest cultural events, the Greek Festival, and this year’s turned out to be an unsurprisingly huge success!
Determined to get down to my roots (yes my surname, Lazarides, is Greek!), I wasn’t bothered by the 200m long entry line and $5 fee. In fact, even the 20 minute line-up for food was well worth the wait!
A delectable array of the most popular Greek fare, including beautifully-chewy, grilled haloumi, mouth-watering marinated octopus and melt-in-your-mouth lamb souvlaki, took me right back to a plastic outdoor dining setting, perched upon a sparkling water’s edge in Rhodes, Greece. Sounds dreamy, right? You have NO idea!
Greek honey puffs. (Photo courtesy of The Gold Coast Bulletin)
It was nice, too, to see the local Greek kids whip out a few traditional dance moves to an authentic live band. The infamous Zorba dance was, by far, the most popular event of the day, with the large stage area crowded by everyone, from old to young, linking arms and stepping, as one mass, to the quickening melody.
All in all, the Greek Festival was a fantastic day, great for families with small children and primped Greek girls looking for husbands… WOOPAH!
Traditional Greek dancers. (Photo courtesy of the Gold Coast Bulletin)
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To cut what could be a long story short, I WANT TO WIN THIS COMPETITION!!!! Please, please, please help me by commenting on my blog, liking my Facebook page and following my Twitter! If I win, I promise I won’t let you down. I’ll provide all the most entertaining travel stories and fantastic deals that will help YOU see the world too!
I’m in the process of filming and editing my application video for the competition and you will be the first to see it once it’s all done! So, watch this space!
Alright, alright, I know it’s been a long time since my last post (7 months long in fact), but I’ve just had so much going on. I’ve left NYC, travelled to Mexico, returned to Australia, travelled to Sydney, graduated from university, spent a week skiing, applied for a hundred jobs, held 2 car boot sales (well, the second is this weekend) and now I’m preparing a huge job application for the Monthly Catch Savvy Traveller competition (which I know you’re all going to help me WIN - I’ll tell you how in a later post)!!
I just wanted to remind you all (who, I’m sure, sit there anxiously waiting for my posts) that I’m still here and still going strong! This post won’t be too long but I PROMISE that this is the beginning of a new me. A me that will CONTINUE to add posts to my blog each week.
So, stay tuned. Very exciting stuff to come!!!
My graduation!!!
This is an email my dad just sent me. I was in fits of laughter.
I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me today and we all could probably use more calm in our lives. Some doctor on TV this morning said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see things I’d started and hadn’t finished and before leaving for work this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, a pockage of Prungles, tha mainder of bot Prozic and Valiuminun scriptins, the res of the chesescke an a box a chocletz.
Yu haf no idr how bludy fablus I feel rite now.
Plaese sned dhis orn to dem you fee ar in ned ov iennr pisss. An telum, u fukin luvum!!
I’ll drink to that!!
Ok so I just received my first (and probably only) care package from my wonderful parents!! Besides it containing the very necessary cold and flu medicine and nurofen (you can’t buy such things over the counter at the pharmacies here), a value share pack of Tim Tams was also nestled away in the box. I didn’t realise how much I had missed these things until I chomped into my first bite of one…. wow! Truly sensational!
Thanks Mum and Dad - despite you being worlds away on the boat living like total nomads, you still managed to get to a post office - on the main street of a tiny coastal town no doubt - and also found a way to stress my continuing need for “patience”. I.e. the hippie bracelet you included with a description tag assuring me that patience is the key. You both know me far too well :) xxx
Yummmmm!
Well, nothing’s changed. I am still totally, head-over-heels in love with New York City. I love it how you don’t have to wait any longer than five minutes for the subway. I love it how you can order any food you like online and have it delivered to your door within half an hour (Ok, except for that one time when the Thai restaurant across the road from us took two and a half hours to find our apartment. Go figure). I love it how there is such a widespread and diverse magnitude of cultures (I’m getting a lot of Spanish language practice). I love it how there are so many fun things to do and an opportunity lying on every corner. I could go on loving things here forever. But, seriously, this city is all about total accessibility and I am enamoured by it! I will explain a few standout activities since I arrived here and you will see exactly what I mean…
Two weeks in, after only just unpacking my suitcase and settling into the apartment, Annabelle and I were off to visit a friend in The Hamptons for the weekend; Thought we might as well take the opportunity while the weather was still warm. And warm it was - obvious from the severity of my sunburn, like red paint oozing down the rear of my legs and back. It’s safe to say that all existing evidence has now been removed and I can get back to my storytelling.
The Hamptons – only an hour and a half’s train ride away - was noticeably quiet and deserted at the time we went. After Labor Day, everything pretty much shuts down there; city slickers leave their beach houses and head back to their metropolitan digs, restaurants and bars close down for the season and there’s not a huge amount to see. But the peace and quiet, along with the surprisingly sunny, balmy weather, was a much-welcomed treat. Also welcomed, was the fact that restaurant and we ate at on our first night, was closing down the following day and, as a result, all food and drinks were heavily discounted. Perfect timing I must say! A whole lobster for $23.99 – now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!
The Hamptons
So, after ticking The Hamptons off the USA to-do list, what could be better than a little more American fun with Beer Pong at a frat party?! That’s exactly what we did one Friday night after a scrumptious dinner in Little Italy. Susie, another fellow Bondy here, knows some local college fraternity members; a bunch of sturdy young male graduates, with a keen eye for matching Ralph Lauren shirts, coiffed hair and brown suede loafers.
The amount of alcohol this group of beer enthusiasts consumed was astonishing, even to a bunch of Aussies! Seriously, even the girls – who were perfectly groomed with no stray hairs and a constant layering of glossy lipstick – downed one pint after another of beer or even straight vodka. Keeping up was impossible!
Hanging out with this group was great for us NYC newbies because they took us out to a bar on Rivington Street after there was not a drop of alcohol left in the house. Rivington Street is clearly the place to go for a fun night out. With its diverse selection of bars and clubs, it attracted a sizeable crowd of hip youngsters looking for a place to let their hair down after a big week of study or work.
No trip to New York City is complete without a trip to the well-proclaimed, best bagel shop, ‘Murray’s Bagels’. It is dangerously close to our apartment on 6th Avenue near 14th Street (we live on 12th Street), and the lengthy queue asserts all signs that you shouldn’t be eating bagels every day. However, they’re just so dreamy. My favourite is the cinnamon and raisin bagel with raisin, walnut and cinnamon cream cheese. Definitely a once-a-week treat… If that!
Future blog teaser: Just quietly, I have been told that the bagels in Montreal, Canada, leave the New York ones for dead. I will be heading to Montreal in November so will settle this debate once and for all at a later date. Keep checking back!
Adding to my list of standout New Yorker activities was attending the New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox baseball game at the Yankees Stadium. The Yankees lost and baseball is the most boring game known to man-kind (yes, more so than cricket, which I actually enjoy) to say the least, but the atmosphere was fervent and Annabelle and I had a lot of fun figuring out all the best things to do with your finger… The big, foam ‘number one’ finger that is!!
Me and ‘the finger’ at the baseball
As you can see, I’ve really made the most of immersing myself in the US culture. Call me naive, but until my visit here, I didn’t even think that America had its own real culture, just a mixture of them like Australia. But, not for the first time, I have been proven wrong and am really loving the sporty, consumerist (not in a bad sense) culture that belongs to NYC. So much so I don’t want to leave. See, it’s true, all you do need is love!
Now to find a way to stay here…
My first published article with Travel Junkie in New York City!!
Tuesday the 14th of September is a day that will go down in history in my books. I attended the Eminem and Jay Z “Home and Home” tour at the Yankees Stadium in the Bronx, NYC. An unforgettable evening.
From the moment Lupe Fiasco stepped out on stage to warm up the crowd for Eminem’s arrival, people were already high, sweaty, fist pumping and everything in between.
The rest of the concert is completely indescribable through words. I will do my best though.
Please note: I am an avid Eminem fan, and have been since the ripe young age of 11, so please ignore the intense amount of bias and adoration towards him in the next few paragraphs. I cannot be held responsible for what enters this computer screen in the next ten minutes.
It was seriously the most phenomenal night. Ever! As the predominantly black crowd spat the rhymes of two of the most influential rappers in the hip hop scene, the stadium collectively throbbed to the beat. The sensational pulsing was like that of a Bose sub woofer.
These were the real fans. The true hip hop fanatics. Some went crazy with obsession as they focused on never missing a word in a song. You could literally see the veins popping out of their necks as they rapped along with Marshall and Jay Z. I realised just how powerful their music has been and how much many of these fans can relate to the lyrics. It was like a cult following. I have never seen anything like it.
I think I was most impressed by the 60-something year old, balding man, who repeatedly appeared on the big screen TV, soaked in sweat and matching Marshall’s fast-paced rap syllables with his own. Very impressive.
Dr Dre, 50 Cent, Kanye West, Mary J. Blige and Beyonce all made appearances, making this the night of nights to be in New York. This was the first tour Eminem has done in over three years and it definitely didn’t seem like he was out of practice.
The Home and Home concert was a historical moment, as they played only four, completely sold out shows - two in each of Jay Z and Eminem’s home towns, Detroit and New York. I am so lucky to have been here when they were touring, let alone lucky to have even got tickets.
It is safe to say, I can now die happily. Seeing Eminem live; one more box checked off the bucket list.
